British Music Videos 1966 2016

Based on new archival evidence and interviews, and setting out a new theoretical framework for music video analysis, Emily Caston presents a major new analysis of music videos from 1966-2016, identifying not only their distinctive British traits, but their parallels with British film genres and styles. By analysing the genre, craft and authorial voice of music video within the context of film and popular music, the book sheds new light on existing theoretical and historical questions about audiences, authorship, art and the creative industries. Far from being an American cultural form, the book reveals music video's roots in British and European film traditions, and suggests significant ways in which British video has impacted popular film and music culture.

Using fresh archival evidence and interviews, and setting out an original theoretical framework for music video analysis, Emily Caston presents a major new analysis of music videos from 1966 to 2016. She identifies not only their distinctive British traits but their parallels with British film genres and styles. By analysing the genre, craft and authorial voice of music video within the context of film and popular music, this book sheds new light on existing theoretical and historical questions about audiences, authorship, art and the creative industries. It reveals that, far from being an American cultural form, music video has its roots in British and European film traditions, and reveals significant ways in which British video has impacted popular film and music culture. Emily Caston is Professor of Screen Industries at the University of West London.

Traveling Music Videos offers a new interdisciplinary perspective on how contemporary music videos travel across, shape, and transform various media, online platforms, art institutions, and cultural industries worldwide. With the onset of digital technologies and the proliferation of global video-sharing websites at the beginning of the 21st century, music video migrated from TV screens to turn instead to the internet, galleries, concert stages, and social media. As a result, its aesthetics, technological groundings, and politics have been radically transformed. From the kinaesthetic experience of TikTok to the recent reimaginations of maps and navigation tools through music video cartographies, from the ecofeminist voices mediated by live-stream concerts to the transmedia logic of video games and VR, from the videos' role in contemporary art galleries to their political interventions -the chapters map the ways music video is continually reconfiguring itself. The volume tracks music video's audiovisual itineraries across different geographies, maps its transmedia routes, and tackles the cultural impact that it has on our current media ecosystem.

The first in-depth study of David Bowie's music videos across a sustained period takes on interweaving storyworlds of an iconic career. Remarkable for their capacity to conjure elaborate imagery, Bowie's videos provide fascinating exemplars of the artistry and remediation of music video. When their construction is examined across several years, they appear as time-travelling vessels, transporting kooky characters and strange story-world components across time and space. By charting Bowie's creative and collaborative process across five distinct phases, David Bowie and the Art of Music Video shows how he played a vital role in establishing music video as an artform. Filling a gap in the existing literature, this book shines a light on the significant contributions of directors such as Mick Rock, Stanley Dorfman and David Mallet, each of whom taught Bowie much about how to use the form. By examining Bowie's collaborative process, his use of surrealist strategies and his integration of avant-garde art with popular music and media, the book provides a history of music video in relation to the broader fields of audiovisual media, visual music and art.

To date, there has been a significant gap in work on the social history of music in Britain from 1950 to the present day. The three volumes of Live Music in Britain address this gap and do so through a unique prism—that of live music. The key theme of the books is the changing nature of the live music industry in the UK, focused upon popular music but including all musical genres. Via this focus, the books offer new insights into a number of other areas, including the relationship between commercial and public funding of music, changing musical fashions and tastes, the impact of changing technologies, the changing balance of power within the music industries, the role of the state in regulating and promoting various musical activities within an increasingly globalised music economy, and the effects of demographic and other social changes on music culture. Drawing on new archival research, a wide range of academic and non-academic secondary sources, participant observation and a series of interviews with key personnel, the books have the potential to become landmark works within Popular Music Studies and broader cultural history. The second volume covers the period from Hyde Park to the Hacienda (1968–84).

The genre of the video clip has been established for more than thirty years, mainly served by the sub genres of video art and music video. This book explores processes of hybridization between music video, film, and video art by presenting current theoretical discourses and engaging them through interviews with well-known artists and directors, bringing to the surface the crucial questions of art practice. The collection discusses topics including postcolonialism, posthumanism, gender, race and class and addresses questions regarding the hybrid media structure of video, the diffusion between content and form, art and commerce as well as pop culture and counterculture. Through the diversity of the areas and interviews included, the book builds on and moves beyond earlier aesthetics-driven perspectives on music video.

This is an exploration of the vital and rapidly evolving world of Commercial Dance, tracing the evolution and merging of Hip-Hop, Club and Jazz dance styles from the music videos of the early 1980s, to today's huge influence on pop music and dance in a multi-media culture. Chapters including ‘Iconic Moments’ and ‘Main Movers’ contextualise and analyse culturally significant works and choreographers. With direct contributions from an international array of industry leading dancers, choreographers and creatives - including JaQuel Knight (Beyonce’s choreographer), Rich + Tone Talauega (Madonna & Michael Jackson collaborators), Rebbi Rosie (Rihanna’s dancer), Dean Lee (Janet Jackson’s choreographer) and Kiel Tutin (BLACKPINK’s choreographer) - this book shines a light on the creatives in the Commercial Dance industry who have made significant impacts, not just on the world of dance but on popular culture itself. Chapters discussing dance history, copyright law, inclusivity and dance class culture as well as additional contributions from dance scholars enable this book to give credence to Commercial Dance as a legitimate academic area of study. This is a complete and comprehensive textbook for all dance students at any level of study on college, university or conservatory courses.

This book constitutes the first monograph dedicated to an academic analysis of David Bowie’s appearances in film. Through close textual analysis together with production and reception histories, Bowie’s ‘silver screen’ career is explored in full. The book covers performance documentaries such as Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, star vehicles ranging from the eulogised The Man Who Fell to Earth to the excoriated Just a Gigolo, plus roles from the horror chic of The Hunger and cult fantasy of Labyrinth to the valiant high-brow Baal and vainglorious high-budget Absolute Beginners, ending with Bowie as Bowie in Bandslam and others as ‘Bowie’ in Velvet Goldmine and Stardust. Alongside showing his willingness to experiment (and at times fail) across a variety of genres, this study investigates Bowie’s performative style that, while struggling to accommodate the requirements of cinematic realism, fits more harmoniously with alternative production codes and aesthetics. More broadly, by exploring the commercial, socio-cultural and ideological significance of Bowie on film, the book demonstrates how notions of gender, sexuality and identity formation, plus commodity and cultural capital, function and fluctuate in contemporary society.